The Sunday Girl

by Pip Drysdale

  ‘I can’t,’ I lied as I pushed him away, ‘I have my period.’

  ‘Oh, don’t piss me off,’ he hissed into my ear, ripping at my knickers, ‘I know you don’t. I’m not a fucking idiot. But you know what, have it your way – just know that one way or the other I’m fucking you tonight. Darling.’

  tuesday

  Master Sun said: ‘Seize something that he cherishes and he will do your will.’

  21 FEBRUARY

  The nausea hit me in waves. I was frightened to blink. If I keep my eyes open I won’t see it. And if I don’t see it, I won’t remember. My eyes stung, a wire coat hanger scraped the back of my throat, I sniffed back tears and a lack of sleep blurred my vision. Every sound, smell and movement felt menacing: the hum of the photocopier behind me, the flickering light overhead and the bitter smell of coffee drifting from my cup. Everything made me flinch.

  Kevin was doing his mail round. I watched him start at the other end of the room and weave his way through the cubicles; to him, it was just like any other day. But if it were just like any other day I wouldn’t have to concentrate to remember what came after ‘breathe in’.

  Breathe out.

  My exhale was shaky. I hoped Val couldn’t hear me. If she could, she pretended she couldn’t. And for that I was grateful.

  The last thing Angus had said as he walked out the door that morning was: ‘See you tonight.’ And the words rang in my ears.

  I’d replied: ‘See you then.’

  But I wouldn’t be going back there again.

  I’d tried to fight him and I had failed. I’d tried to pry myself free and had ended up even more entangled. And so, in the early hours of the morning as I lay there dead still, trying not to wake him, I’d constructed a new plan. A plan for total escape.

  Soon I would build upon the ‘cramps’ I’d experienced the day before. I’d clutch my abdomen. Then I’d go home – my home, not his – pack some things and leave for my mother’s house. And I would never see that man again. Yes. I’d be on the train to East Sussex before he even realised I was gone.

  Until then, I was safe at work. My laptop computer beside me.

  I’d been reading more about Sophie that morning: she died during what was reported as a failed robbery attempt. Battered to death in her hotel room. Her boyfriend had sustained only one injury, a mild blow to the head that knocked him out. He awoke to find her body. She hadn’t been raped. Nothing had been reported stolen. Nobody was ever arrested. And her parents, Justin and Lorraine Reed – a kind-looking couple based in Hampshire – fought for justice, reached out to the public for information and tried to get the British authorities involved, but failed.

  My jaw was tight as I noted down their contact details in my phone: one day maybe I could tell them what I knew.

  I tried to compose myself as Kevin wove his way towards me.

  There had been an email from David in my inbox when I arrived that morning but I hadn’t responded. It read: Sorry about calling on Saturday. I hope I didn’t cause problems for you and your fiancé … I think we should talk. I’ll be in your office a little later, otherwise call me? David.

  And just like that I could see him there in front of me, grinning, feel the warmth of his hand on my lower back and his soft lower lip as we kissed.

  I should have stayed. I should have stayed with him. None of this would have happened.

  Kevin was getting closer. He was talking to Val, fiddling with his fuchsia tie and glancing in my direction.

  I shut down my browser.

  ‘And how are you today, mademoiselle?’ He winked as he arrived at my desk and riffled through his cart.

  ‘Really well.’ I grinned. My eyes started tearing up, so I smiled harder. The harsh fluorescent office lights made it difficult not to squint.

  ‘Here we go,’ he said, handing me two items: a stationery brochure with a bright red hole punch on the cover, and a thin white package. ‘For you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. The stationery brochure went straight into the plastic rubbish bin under my desk, the thin white package remained in my hands. My name and work address were handwritten on the front. But there was no stamp: it had been couriered.

  I recognised the writing immediately.

  ‘Well, have a dandy day!’ he said as he moved on.

  ‘You too, Kevin.’ My eyes were burning. My fingers ripped at the white envelope, as though trying to destroy its contents before I even knew what they were.

  Inside was a DVD. And on the front was a smiley face, drawn in pink highlighter.

  Breathe out.

  But the arrival of that package didn’t change my plan at all, it merely brought it forward an hour or so.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Val, I’m still feeling really unwell,’ I said in a monotone voice over the partition. ‘Would it be okay if I work at home this afternoon?’

  ‘Oh,’ she replied, rolling her chair back to look at me with an irritated frown. ‘Maybe you should go to the doctor?’

  ‘Yes, I think I might,’ I said, grabbing my handbag. And then I stood up and headed for the elevator.

  I pressed the down button, then focused on the carpet. I still hadn’t called my mother back and Charlotte had left two messages on my phone the night before, checking I was okay, so now I needed to call her back too. But all I could think about at that moment was what was on that white disk.

  Ping.

  The elevator opened and I looked up.

  And there, in front of me, he stood.

  David Turner: perfectly put together in his immaculate navy suit, white shirt and light pink tie. A man in control. And beside him stood Nigel, the head of research, his pinched face concentrating on what David had just said.

  Fuck.

  I stared at them, my breath quick. I was wearing a dirty pair of black trousers, an old grey jumper and my unwashed hair was up in a bun. I looked like I was coming apart at the seams. Nigel eyed me as they moved towards me and for a brief moment I thought they might walk straight past.

  ‘Taylor,’ David said, stopping in front of me. ‘So nice to see you.’ He smiled a professional smile for Nigel’s benefit but he was standing so close to me I could smell the spiced lime of his shampoo and the familiar musk of his skin.

  ‘Hello David,’ I said. ‘Hi Nigel.’

  Nigel gave me a cold look. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Nice to see you, Taylor.’ His tone said otherwise.

  ‘I’m glad we bumped into you,’ David said. ‘I was hoping to put in a meeting with you, get your initial thoughts on an idea I’m considering.’

  The elevator doors closed over his shoulder, and that little white disk was burning hot in my bag.

  ‘Of course, I’d be happy to,’ I said, my voice steady but high. My heart was banging against my chest walls and Nigel was watching us, clearly confused by David’s warmth.

  ‘Great,’ said David. ‘I’ll get my secretary to send through a request.’ Our eyes met as I nodded. I could see him dancing in his bathrobe. Taste the cigarette we smoked out that hotel window. Feel his weight against me. And my cheeks grew hot.

  ‘I look forward to it,’ I said, glancing at Nigel. He was looking at his watch now.

  ‘Wonderful,’ David replied, eyes on mine, and then they continued to wherever they were going and I ran to the stairs.

  Chiara was crying from inside the door, and that warned me that something was off. And so my hands shook a little as I slid the key into the lock: How did she get in? The DVD was in my handbag. And something deep inside me already knew what it contained. I turned the key, opened the door slowly and looked around me. Nothing. She ran out through my legs and I shut the door tightly behind me.

  I dropped my computer and handbag by the door, pulled out that white envelope and rushed towards the DVD player. Power on. TV on. Open. Insert. Close. Wait.

  Grabbing for the remote control I navigated to the DVD. A little round disk swirled as it connected. It took forever.

  A sharp pain hit me ri
ght between the ribs as two boxes appeared. Even from a distance, even as thumbnails, I knew what they were.

  I clicked on the first one.

  And I think I recognised him long before I recognised myself.

  His chest, broad and covered in soft dark hair, and his hands on my hips: his face was obscured and out of frame. And there was no sound. But there was something about the way he was moving. Or breathing. Something that was unmistakably him.

  Me, I didn’t get immediately.

  Did I really look like that? All blotchy and contorted?

  But as a hand came into frame and pulled my hair back, lifting my face to the camera – ‘Look how pretty you are’ – a wave of hot shame washed over me. And in an instant I knew exactly what I was watching. I knew exactly when it was taped.

  What I didn’t know was how.

  Battery acid rose in my throat and I leaned forward over my knees. I couldn’t help it. My stomach convulsed and I vomited. There, on the tassels of my red-and-beige hand-me-down rug.

  I stared at the screen: there was still another film.

  Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I sat back on the sofa, pointed the remote control at the screen and clicked on the second box.

  It started to play and I cried out. I paused the tape. My breath was fast: I knew when it was taken. On the Thursday evening. I’d just stepped out of the bath, and he’d said he wanted to watch me make myself come. The towel was right there in frame, thrown by the side of the bed. And he was nowhere in sight. According to the tape, he was innocent and I was …

  Another wave of nausea hit and I went to vomit again.

  But how had he taped them? The video with Holly was taken using his phone. I knew he was taking it – I shouldn’t have let him do it, but I knew it was happening.

  But this?

  I stared at the image on the screen. My face frozen in a horrible expression. I was looking right at the camera, nobody would believe that I didn’t know it was there …

  The mirror.

  But how? It felt unreal, like nobody would be that malicious. And yet there it was, the proof, staring back at me in humiliating detail from the screen.

  I didn’t know what to do or who to tell. My whole body burned with shame as I moved through to the bathroom, where I grabbed a tissue from the box on the windowsill and roughly blew my nose. Vomit in the tissue. Bitterness in my mouth. And my reflection staring back at me from the mirror: I was spiritually splintered, red, white and pink.

  I held on to the ceramic basin below it and sobbed. My shoulders heaved and my nose ran.

  And then I heard a rap on the door.

  Shit.

  I thought it might be the neighbours: maybe they heard me crying and were worried. The walls were thin. I looked in the mirror and tried to straighten myself up, then I went to the front door.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, trying to sound okay.

  ‘Open the door, darling.’

  My heart shook and I stood still.

  ‘Darling,’ Angus said, ‘open the door.’

  But I couldn’t let him in. My hands trembled.

  How did he know I would come here?

  ‘Taylor, I know you’re in there, let me in,’ he said in a calm voice. ‘I’m not going to do anything with those tapes unless you force me to.’

  My hand was covering my mouth, my breath was shallow.

  I could feel him leaning up against the door.

  ‘Taylor …’ he said. ‘I mean it. Let me in. Now.’

  And so I reached up to the cold metal deadlock, turned it, and let him in.

  ‘Good girl,’ he said as he stepped inside and placed his briefcase by the door. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’

  I flinched at his touch as he took me in his arms. ‘I have a key, darling, I cut it from yours ages ago. I would have just let myself in anyway, so that was a good choice. You should be proud.’

  My sobs deepened and my shoulders shook.

  ‘Stop crying, darling,’ he said as we swayed, my head against his chest.

  Then he took me by the hand and led me to the sofa.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said. Then he walked through to the kitchen, and I heard the cupboard open and the faucet turn on. ‘Are you thirsty?’ he called.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, my voice shaky, ‘thank you.’

  A moment later he was moving towards me and handing me a glass of water. I sipped it slowly, watching him.

  ‘Darling, those tapes are not a problem unless you make them into a problem,’ he said. His eyes were dark. I tried to steady my breath and wiped my running nose with my hand.

  He put his empty glass down on the coffee table, right beside the vase of aging roses he’d brought me just a week before, then he took mine and did the same.

  ‘That’s not to say we don’t have any problems, though,’ he said, reaching for my hand. I hesitated but I gave it to him. What choice did I have? And he helped me to my feet, held my hand tenderly for a moment, and then with so much strength, so much brutality, he crushed it. The force was unbearable. My bones twisted and ached. He was so strong.

  And I yelled out in pain.

  ‘Ow, please, honey, don’t,’ I cried.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ he seethed as he let go of my hand. I fell to the floor and lay there, buckled over, looking at him. He grabbed me by the hair and forced me to stand.

  ‘You see, darling,’ he hissed, ‘I came here earlier today, it was going to be a surprise, but I found something that really fucking pissed me off.’ His grip tightened and he walked me over to the bed. ‘I was so cross I had to go for a walk to calm down so I didn’t do anything harsh.’ My legs struggled to keep up with him and the world was a blur through my tears. Everything hurt, even my nails. They ached.

  He pushed me hard and I landed on the bed. Creak. I gasped for air. And just lay there, face down, watching him open the top drawer of my chest by the bed. That was where I kept my underwear.

  ‘Darling,’ he said through gritted teeth, as his hand fished around inside, ‘what the fuck are these doing here?’ His eyes flashed at me as he held up his lucky socks. That brown-and-black pinstriped ball.

  Fuck.

  I opened my mouth but no sound came out.

  He just stood looking at me. Smiling. And then his hand reached into his back pocket, and he pulled something small and black into view.

  ‘Of course, I found this at the same time,’ he said, dangling a little black rectangle in front of him.

  It was suspended by a thin thread in the corner, held between his index finger and thumb. And it was swaying.

  I squinted at it, trying to make it out. But then I knew.

  It was my bank keypad: access to my online banking. It lived in my underwear drawer, right by his lucky socks. It was part of a two-tier security system my bank had introduced to up security measures. That was how I got into my account: a code generated by the keypad plus the answers to two security questions.

  He threw it at me but it missed and hit the floor with a small, sharp clack. Then he walked over to me slowly, reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and threw four £20 notes at me; they landed by my head. ‘There you go, Fluffy, that should get you through till payday,’ he said.

  Fluffy.

  Fluffy Kramer.

  My prostitute name.

  Favourite pet.

  First street.

  The answers to my banking security questions.

  I didn’t even need to log on to know what he’d done. I already knew that the £984 I’d squirrelled away over the past four months would no longer be there. He was doing everything he could to stop me leaving. And it was working. I wouldn’t get paid until that Friday and had maxed my credit card months before on my flat deposit. So, as it stood, I had £80 to my name, three sex tapes in existence, a boyfriend who hated me and no visible path to escape.

  He was right: he was smarter than I was.

  And that would have to change.

  He moved towar
ds me, and before I could flinch he lifted his hand into a flat palm and rushed it towards my face. One swift, fluid movement. As though to slap. Hard. But he stopped just before impact. A small yelp escaped my lips and he laughed.

  ‘I’ll see you later on, darling,’ he said, as he stood up straight. ‘Have a shower or something.’

  And then he walked towards the door and picked up his briefcase. Before he slammed the door behind him, he said: ‘Don’t do anything stupid, darling.’

  Bang.

  And I lay there, vomit in my hair, mascara clogging my eyes. I’d been so naïve: a leak in his kitchen sink, Felicia, Mrs Clifton, prostitutes. It was all so petty. So amateur. If I was going to escape I’d need to think like him.

  That’s when I picked up the phone and called Charlotte.

  I was sitting on a grey plastic chair opposite a kind-looking man with glasses – I say ‘man’ but he must have been around twenty-two. That had been Charlotte’s sensible advice: ‘Go to the police!’ she’d yelled down the phone. ‘Then come stay here.’

  I hadn’t told her everything – to do that would mean relinquishing all control over how things turned out. But I had told her Angus was cheating on me again and that when I’d confronted him about it, he’d got angry and held me by the throat against the wall. A corroborative witness would be a useful thing to have, should he try to frame himself as the victim. And it occurred to me that she might be right: maybe it was smart to get something on record. And so, on my way back to Angus’s apartment I’d done just that.

  From the outside, the Belgravia police station looked like a badly designed university building, constructed sometime in the late seventies when brown brick and blue paint were considered the height of chic. It was marginally better inside. I was taking a sip of warm water from the filter and going over in my mind what I wanted to say – what I needed to remember not to say – when a young detective with a trendy haircut, shaved at the sides, appeared. He greeted me with a handshake and asked me to follow him.

  We walked through a well-lit corridor. Brown carpet. Strange, diamond-patterned wallpaper. And him, throwing smiles at me over his shoulder every seven steps or so. Step, step, step, step, step, step, step, smile, step … I followed him into a small office at the end. On his desk sat a picture of a woman with auburn hair. And a white stapler, much like Val’s, lay on its side by his mouse pad.